TWO YEARS AFGHANISTAN ABANONED: 4/4: Consequences: An Intelligence Officer's War by David Grantham (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2023
⏱️ 9 minutes
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TWO YEARS AFGHANISTAN ABANONED: 4/4: Consequences: An Intelligence Officer's War by David Grantham (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Consequences-Intelligence-Officers-David-Grantham/dp/098440631X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
We are still living in the long shadow of the Iraq War.
In 2006, David Grantham was fresh out of college and serving as a counterintelligence officer with the elite and secretive Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Iraq was veering toward civil war. The U.S. military desperately needed better on-the-ground intelligence to turn the tide. Grantham found himself in Kuwait and Afghanistan, then at Iraq’s infamous American prison, Camp Bucca. Not only was Bucca the breeding ground for the Islamic State, it was in southern Iraq, where America’s deadly fight with Iran was an open secret.
Consequences is both a riveting behind-the-scenes look at intelligence operations at the height of the Iraq war, and a charming and sobering story of one man’s journey through the pleasures and consequences that come with wartime intelligence.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Boucher. This is the new John Boucher Show CBS Audio Network. |
| 0:11.4 | David Grantham, a veteran of the United States Air Force, an armed federal authority once upon a time. |
| 0:18.1 | He worked with the Air Force in Afghanistan at the worst of it in Bogram Air Base, |
| 0:23.9 | and in Iraq at the very worst of it during the time the late months of Zarkawi, |
| 0:27.9 | who was eventually killed by a U.S. Air Force airstrike, north of Baghdad in the middle of 2006. |
| 0:33.8 | But here we are 15 years after Zarkawi's death. He was murder-incorporated and murder-incorporated has changed its address. |
| 0:41.1 | We now call it the cartels who are that are running the human trafficking, the drug running, the contraband running, |
| 0:51.1 | the weapons running, and possibly also the penetration of our southern border by our enemies. |
| 0:57.1 | The cartels run it. David works on these matters for the Secure Free Society, |
| 1:03.3 | and his website has an elaborate and extremely helpful diagram of how networks work together. |
| 1:10.0 | So my first question is in innocent one, David. These are Kawi Network and the integration of al-Qaeda into the Sunni and Shia conflict that was 2006-2007. |
| 1:22.2 | Does that help? Does that interpret what we're seeing with the cartels today, how they work together, how they recruit on the American side, |
| 1:29.8 | how gangs in America are working with the cartels as far north as Chicago? |
| 1:34.2 | Is that a revelation, or do we know what that is, and we should apply the methods we learned in Iraq, David? |
| 1:40.8 | We learned quite a bit in Iraq that is helpful for today to understanding the concept of networks. |
| 1:46.8 | I would argue that the network situation in Iraq, at the time I was there, and what I recounted in my book, |
| 1:54.2 | was a smaller version of what we are encountering today, in that it's more ideologically driven, |
| 2:03.4 | so there is an affinity for shared ideas, and within that there may be different skill sets, |
| 2:11.5 | but they're all driving towards a similar goal. |
| 2:14.0 | What we see today, especially in Latin America with Mexican cartels and their connection to states, |
| 2:21.0 | who sponsor them like Venezuela, like Iran through proxies and Hezbollah, |
| 2:27.4 | they have achieved a larger network concept and operation that includes people who have no interest |
... |
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